


The Dark Spaces

by telm_393



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Dark, Dissociation, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), Psychological Torture, Repressed Memories, Sensory Deprivation, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 21:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13912125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: The memories come, and they don’t.Dirk lies on the floor of the agency. Todd is present for this development.And whatever it is he doesn't want to remember probably isn't important anyway.





	The Dark Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> There's actually no spoilers. This is all about Riggins Blackwing.

This was Blackwing:

Numbness.

The occasional moment of happiness with Mona, with Francis. Mona, his friend, his dearest friend…

Electricity.

Experiments, essentially just check-ups. Useless.

Blurs.

A lot of blurring, actually. It was such a long, boring time, it makes sense that it would mostly be a blur, a fogged-up window.

Darkness.

Frustration. He knew things, not enough, not the right things, knew he could not unlock the full potential Riggins was always going on about.

Slipping away, he did what he had to.

Darkness, darkness, darkness. He's not so sure about which part of his life it may come from.

Clearly, it’s not important enough to remember. He probably could, if he tried, but he won’t.

Nothing would come of it, most likely.

He really thinks that he’s just remembering the moments when he was asleep. Sometimes there are thumps in the darkness, sometimes there is screaming, but he thinks he’s imagining things, and besides—he doesn’t really have to think on it much. All the excitement in his life doesn’t leave much room for quiet moments, or moments where he has to contemplate or feel these things at all, and if he does, he knows how to think of them in a way that doesn’t hurt. He learned how to make it not hurt.

His life started when he left Blackwing, really. It doesn’t matter what happened there, though he remembers it all anyway. Objectively bad, but he has faced it and moved on.

He has moved on.

He goes his whole life moving on, and he does a good job, even if sometimes he ends up staying still, weaving himself into his old reality while weaving away from the memories he doesn’t remember. A throwback, he supposes, to the old days.

But that’s normal. It was objectively bad, what happened to him, after all.

He’s moved on, though.

He’s mentioned that a few times, but he really can’t stress it enough.

 

 

Dirk is lying on the floor.

There is an explanation as to how he got here, and this is it: he saw something, can’t remember what, or thought something, can’t remember what, or heard something, can’t remember what, and got very tired and very blank very suddenly, so he sat down (not in a chair), and then there was a feeling of vertigo that cause him to lean over until ending up in a supine position on the agency’s attractive hardwood flooring.

So now he is here, lying on the floor, and the position isn’t the most comfortable he’s ever been, but then again, he has been _very_ uncomfortable, and this is nothing compared to that, so he’s at the very least well enough.

Except for how his body won’t let him do anything other than lie down on the floor, but his brain isn’t protesting the whole situation much because he feels like he has been so _fast_ over the past few weeks because things have _been_ fast and he deserves a bit of rest and this happens sometimes, he thinks. These things just happen. He just gets through them.

Todd and Farah keep telling Dirk to sleep.

Dirk is not sleeping now because the idea of it stays still in his chest like a crushed stress ball of dread—something about the dark makes him certain that he does not want to lie still in it—but he thinks that, regardless of REM cycle, something throughout him has gone dormant.

Something in his body, his brain, his heart, has slipped into a coma, caused a gentle numbing of the indescribable emotions and memories and half-remembered thoughts that maybe those memories are not complete that have been jabbing him like needles, jolting him like electric shocks.

Now they sink into him, burning away his skin and numbing his nerves and he feels he has turned to static except for his head, which is heavy as a bowling ball but also full of white noise, like snow on the television, except for those little black holes dotted throughout, and not much is getting through. He believes that this has happened before, quite possibly many times, especially when he was younger. Especially now.

Usually he is able to do this somewhere more appropriate than the floor, though. The couch, or his bed, and there he can lie down and stare until maybe falling asleep out of sheer boredom, because he won’t get anything done. Stay in his apartment, lock the door, tell the others he is doing research.

Sometimes this happens, the memories come like the flip of a light switch.

(With the flip of a light switch.)

And then he protects himself. The memories fill him up except for the ones he doesn’t remember, because he makes sure he doesn’t go there.

He should stand up and get to one of those appropriate places to marinate in this fatigue for a day or so, because now that he has friends, people who are consistently around him, they might find him. He should’ve stayed in his apartment, but somehow he got here. Now that he thinks about it, he’s not sure how he did that.

 _Surprisingly incapable,_ Todd called him shortly after they met. Entirely fair, honestly, but Dirk _has_ managed to survive this long, so that’s impressive, right? Even being like this, wandering dreamlike through life until he has to just stop for a while because semi-mundane reality keeps launching itself at him and he can’t always stay upright after the collision, he has survived this long. Maybe he is a survivor.

He doesn’t feel like one right now, though, because he doesn’t feel much of anything right now, and even his grasp of himself is melting through his fingers from where he is clutching it against his chest. Right now, he doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to do anything, and will do nothing unless forced, and he will not be forced. Doesn’t have to be anymore.

“Dirk?”

He would start, but instead all he does is blink slowly. He didn’t notice anyone come in. A client? Thankfully, no.

Not a client, just Todd. At this, even in spite of it being a Todd development, Dirk feels only dread through the static. He doesn’t say hello, though he should. His mouth won’t open, his vocal cords are frozen because they are worried that if they decide to work they will scream, and so he just breathes. Blinks. Somewhere buried inside him, his heart beats a greeting in Morse code.

“Um.” Todd says. Dirk is impressed with himself, vaguely, for being able to perceive Todd at all, because reality itself is awfully faded. Thankfully, a piece of Dirk has attuned itself to the outside world, and so there is just enough of him there to hear Todd say _um._

There is nothing else after that for a long time, and so Dirk sinks back into himself, back into the stream of creation where he is currently drowning, but he is conscious that it is not an entirely unpleasant drowning. It’s the kind of drowning that is entirely aware that there’s worse things at the surface, or maybe somewhere even deeper. He thinks that the stream of creation runs through an ocean, and at the bottom of that ocean there are those dark places that he doesn’t want to think about, because in those dark places there is screaming.

A brief, convulsive shudder runs through Dirk’s body, because it’s upsetting, a warped, nightmare version of his usual existence.

_You know you used to live here most of the time, Svlad._

Whatever.

Look forward, not back. Keep calm and carry on.

“Dirk, are you…” Todd tries, and then he trails off yet again, and honestly, Todd isn’t very good at words today either. Dirk is afraid he’s going to leave, going to give up. Instead, Todd says, “What’s going on?”

A dizzy shot of panic goes through Dirk at the question, because _that’s_ the problem here, isn’t it, and he lets out a high-pitched noise of distress and curls up more tightly. He knows this must look ridiculous, a grown man curled up on the floor in a fetal position, probably sporting a thousand yard stare, but what’s he supposed to do about it?

“Can you hear me?”

The real question is, of course, _can you understand me?_

It’s funny: they haven’t known each other that long. Todd has never witnessed this.

Dirk should answer the question, so he does. “Yes.”

“What’s going on?”

Dirk manages to murmur, “It’s very complicated.”

An unacceptable answer in certain other contexts, but one that Todd easily accepts with only a sigh. Todd sighs a fair amount.

There’s not much to say.

Todd sits on the floor, and Dirk is…quite frankly, Dirk does not feel much other than a vague pang of confusion and then just a touch of calm. Usually there isn’t anyone here in these moments. Even when he’s surrounded by others, because he’s somewhat surrounded most of the time.

Todd points out, “You can’t really lie on the floor of the agency. You’re. Kind of in the middle? I almost tripped on you. We could at least get to the couch.”

 _We._ That’s nice.

Dirk is not terribly interested in getting to the couch, but, well, he supposes he can do that. He’s always being pushed to move, after all. His body does it, gets up and drifts over to the couch, feeling as otherworldly as they think he is. He sits down heavily, takes a page from Todd’s book, and sighs.

Todd’s quiet for a while. Dirk’s sure it’s awkward for him. Dirk cannot relate.

Todd asks, “Uh, is there anything I can do?”

It’s a little difficult, thinking of an answer to a question like that, because it’s usually about what _Dirk_ can do, see, and so Dirk doesn’t answer, just blurts out the truth of the matter.

“I don’t think I’m okay today,” he admits, and he is too tired to even delight in the accidental rhyme.

_This is complicated._

Todd sighs and says, “I know.”

Dirk suspects that Todd may know a thing or two about not okay days. Maybe even more than Dirk. The thought runs away too quickly to catch.

Dirk needs to tell Todd and himself that there’s something different this time, just so maybe he can grasp it, tell himself that he’s not in a place where he has to feel like this, and so he says, “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too.” Todd pauses. Maybe he’s waiting for Dirk to speak, but Dirk doesn’t have many words at this point. He thinks that he’s a little frightened, actually. He never quite knows what’s going on, but he has a general idea of it.

Now it’s like he’s barely here at all, and there is no explanation, but the problem is that there is one, and then there is a deeper one, and he just doesn’t want to know.

For once, he is not curious, because he feels lost but frustrated but numb but pulled apart in all directions and then also somewhere inside he feels helpless and all alone and why would he want to know the truth of it? Then Todd speaks again and Dirk remembers that the space next to him has been taken up by his best friend.

For once, there’s someone here with him that he loves but can’t be made to hurt, and it brings the other reality, the present, a little closer until he can at least brush against it, and things are more okay than they usually are when they aren’t, because Dirk is a little less helpless, and a lot less alone.

He leans into Todd.

After a beat, Todd leans into Dirk.

It’s better.

It’s good that Dirk doesn’t have these moments so often, anyway, the ones where he goes back but possibly only sort of. Sometimes he has a theory of them, when he’s not actually having them. He thinks that maybe they are a way of tricking himself into thinking that this is as bad as it got.

Though it is, it must be.

Not important.

He rests his head on Todd's soft hair and sighs. It’s all better now.

This will pass, and he will keep forgetting whatever the things are that he hasn’t entirely forgotten, because if he doesn’t really remember them, they’re probably not important.

 

 

They put him in the dark. He begs them not to, but still won’t do what they want, so there he is, and the last thing he sees for some unspecified amount of time is Priest’s smile, and the only thing he hears is Priest’s voice, amplified by loudspeakers he can’t see because he can’t see anything in here, _are you ready to behave, Svlad?_

No, he doesn’t want to do it, can’t do it, not to his friend. He is brave.

Here, he can’t quite be normal, can’t sink into the universe, and his mind becomes an ink-black, soundless, starless night of fear before it creates little visions out of the corners of his eyes, little whispers in his head that beg for the mercy of the calm sort of darkness, and he talks to himself about nothing and then he screams, throws himself against the padded walls until he’s dizzy, and he gets very dizzy because he’s hungry, he guesses, and the dizziness means he can’t know anything, what’s up, what’s down, even what’s supposed-to-be-but-isn’t, like he does out there.

He wants to be out there, even though it’s not outside. He hasn’t been outside for years, but it’s enough. The lights out there are harsh and there are things all around him at least, rather than four walls and empty space. He would like to be back in his swirly little world where he feels the universe slipping around and away from him all the time, would like the numbness of his mundane, predictable reality rather than the mounting terror of true entrapment, the wild fear that this is forever.

Out there he’s stuck, but he’s not trapped.

He’s not supposed to be there, but someday he won’t be, he thinks, or he knows because he is told it all the time--his not-supposed-to-be hereness, can’t-be-here-foreverness, he’s told it in the space in his neck where he can put his fingers to his pulse point and hear his heart beating and the universe telling him truths that he mostly can’t follow.

Literally can’t follow, he means--he understands them, his cases, at the very least understands that he's supposed to be on them, just can’t actually pursue them.

But he's a detective, you know.

The reality he has to live in and the stream of creation he is meant to follow tangle themselves together, cold water drenching the slow trickling, but that’s better than the way his mind unravels in the darkness, the silence.

Finally, he’s unable to refuse the relief of the nightmare he knows rather than the terror of the suspended night that he wishes he didn’t.

(Someday he’ll run from the night forever, tell himself that the dark spaces in his memory are darkness and nothing more. He dreams of that someday.)

Svlad Cjelli is not brave, and finally, after hours or days or however fucking long it’s been, he screams, “Alright! I’ll do what you want! Let me out of here, I’ll do it, I’ll do what you want!”

The light turns on, and Svlad begins to forget.


End file.
